Eco-Disasters 101: The Salton Sea

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.6 • 79.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In 1905, an engineering mistake created a brand new 400-square-mile sea (lake?) in the California desert. People made the most of it at first, but it didn’t take long to become a toxic brew that now threatens the health of anyone in breathing distance.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:05.6	Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:15.2	Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too.
0:20.2	And this is Stuff you should know.
0:21.6	It's a little bit of a jazzy earth science edition, I think.
0:25.6	Yeah, and I mean, we might as well get into it because I just told Jerry the name of this was
0:31.6	Salton Lake.
0:33.6	Mm-hmm.
0:34.6	And even though it's called the Salton Sea.
0:36.6	Right. Which is a, it's called the Salton Sea. Right.
0:38.4	Which is a, it's an inland lake, an Imperial in Coachella valleys, in Riverside, and Imperial County in California, Southern California.
0:47.0	But, and I said, it's not really a sea.
0:50.2	And you said, it's an inless sea.
0:51.4	Then you said, save it.
0:53.0	And so this is gold. I didn't say save it like that.
0:57.4	Well, no, I mean, I'm not going to do my Josh impression. You just did a really mean Josh impression.
1:04.1	Save it. No, no, no. So I guess we need to determine this. Why do they call it a sea?
1:10.0	I mean, it's an inland sea. I don't know. I just know that most people call it that. I failed to go look up whether it is a sea or a lake. I mean, I don't think it has any outlet to the ocean anymore, right? No, not anymore. We're going to talk about that. Well, that makes it a lake. Save it. I think that's... See, I nailed it. I think that's the difference between a sea and a lake. I think a lake has no outlet to the ocean and a sea does. Oh, good point. If I'm not mistaken, I might be wrong about that. I didn't look it up, but... I think California has a lot of work to do. They need to go rewrite all their pamphlets and update their websites and all that stuff.
2:06.2	It's now the Salton Lake. Well, now all their pamphlets just say don't even bother coming here. Right. To the Salton Sea, that is, not California. I love California. Exactly. And the reason that they would have pamphlets that say don't come here is because the Salton Sea is a genuine ecological disaster.
2:15.9	Yeah. Human made it every step of the way. And it's got a really interesting history, too. It's just a good all-around topic, if you ask me. Plus, it was a so-so movie starring Val Kilmer back in the late 90s or early 2000s.
2:23.3	I think it was early 2000s.
2:24.7	It was okay.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 15 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from iHeartPodcasts, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of iHeartPodcasts and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.